Monday, January 28, 2008

Calm down, Paul

No country for bad screenplays - Opinion - smh.com.au

Paul Sheehan holds a diametrically opposite view to mine about the current state of Hollywood:
We really are living in a golden age of cinematic literature and film is the literature of our age. We are a fifth-generation cinema culture and it shows. Filmmaking is imbued with the experiences of several generations and more good and knowing and ironic films are being made than ever before....

It is surely a golden age when the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, are making film after glorious film, when eccentrics like Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch are pumping out movies for cult followings, and when a new generation of talented filmmakers has dominated the Academy Awards.
I was under the distinct impression that Wes Anderson and Jarmusch no longer attract success of either the critical or popular kind, and the Coen brothers are pretty hit and miss now too. While I like some of the Coen movies, I have never quite gotten over Fargo, which was the biggest case of the cinematic emperor having no clothes I have ever seen.

Paul Sheehan is probably of the same school that saw the early 70's as a exciting period of Hollywood artistry, whereas all I could really see was a string of dark films with depressing themes, basically reflecting a the political malaise in the West at the time. Pretty much the same thing is going on now.

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